December 17, 2005
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You know what’s getting crazy stupid big?
Drug stores, that’s what. Oh, for the day’s of Daniel Drugs on 7th St., and Skillern’s on Camp Bowie (both the Arlington Heights and Ridglea areas). Soda fountain counters. Pharmacy area. Cosmetics.
There’s a Walgreen’s being built on the lot where the Minyard’s grocery store used to be, and I swear the critter’s gonna be huge.
Mercy Maud, how large a magazine rack is this thing gonna have?
Comments (6)
They need to sell shoes and groceries and lawn furniture now, of COURSE!
It’s funny – we use a CVS about 4 or 5 miles down the road, and just outside the city limits. It’s progressed from being “Lane’s Rexall Pharmacy” to “Lane’s Rea & Derick,” to just plain ol’ “Rea & Derick,” which included a move a half a block up and across the street to where the A & P used to be. Then it became CVS and to this day – nearly 20 years later, I’d say, Faron still makes up any variety of letters to call it. “QVS,” “VSC”…anything ‘ll do.
It’s my theory that he’s rejecting the mega-store-ness.
me<><
Get him to an MD PDQ.
You know, we still have Daniel Drugs on 7th. That’s my pharmacy. No soda fountain though…not even a bottled Coke. Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate bars though…
Ah, Cindy, memories, memories.
My Dad ran a Rexall pharmacy in the 70′s, and then Rea & Derick was the first “big chain store” (aka The Enemy) in town. There was a Thrift a little farther out, but not as direct a competitor.
The store that was my Dad’s is no more, Rea and Derick was gobbled up by CVS, and Thrift became Eckerd, and we all know what just happened to Eckerd.
Yet another thing to make me feel old before my time.
Oh, and on a similar note, I remember visiting other pharmacies in the area as a kid — indie pharmacists used to sell each other stuff at cost as courtesy if something somewhat unusual was needed quickly for a regular customer, so Mom or one of my brothers and I would have to make a little trip to another store in the next town to pick something up — and there was still quite a few stores around at that time that were dominated by the prescription counter, and sold nothing else other than a small collection of OTC meds, and maybe candy bars or newspapers. My Dad’s was of the more variety sort — greeting cards, unboxed chocolates, a few gifts and paperbacks, etc. Long before I was born, in the 50′s, he had a store in Allentown that had a real live soda fountain.
But anyway, it wasn’t unusual 30 years ago for a pharmacy to sell almost nothing but (gasp) medicine.
“was still quite a few stores around”??? oh brother.